The KKK Took the Boy Scouts Away

Boy Scouts = KKK Youth

The California Supreme Court grappled Tuesday with whether the city of Berkeley violated the First Amendment rights of a group of young sailors connected to the Boy Scouts of America.

Berkeley, celebrated in the 1960s as the home of the Free Speech Movement, revoked free berthing that the Berkeley Sea Scouts received for five decades at the Berkeley Marina. The city targeted the group in 1998 because the Boy Scouts bar atheist and gay members, and such conduct ran contrary to the city's 1997 policy of providing free berthing only to nonprofits without policies of membership discrimination.

The case challenges the legality of removing or withholding public subsidies from groups whose ideals run counter to the government's. During an hour of oral arguments, some of the justices thought out loud about the case's implications.

Justice Marvin Baxter wondered who else could get free subsidies at the marina if the scouts were correct.

"What you're saying is the youth KKK group ... is under equal footing?" Baxter asked Sea Scouts attorney Jonathan Gordon while referring to the Ku Klux Klan.

"Yes. That's correct," Gordon responded.